A new year, new snow patches! For the last few years this thread has proved enormously useful for the collation of information at the end of the season. Also, it's good to see the photos and read the reports from the different areas across the country as the season wears on.
The storms of the last week or so have been from the west. This is excellent news for east-facing hollows. Huge volumes are present in some places, and a photo from today of Ben Nevis (see
here) shows the foot of Zero Gully already totally loaded. Doubtless Observatory Gully will be very deep, too, as will Aonachs Mor and Beag.
snowpatch94 was up at Ciste Mhearad today, and the photo below shows a huge depth already. Excellent for early-season! What encourages me about this photo and others I've seen is the amount of bare, wind-scoured ground. Maybe not so great for skiers, but when you see wind-scoured ground it means that the snow has settled somewhere. And given the prevalence of westerly winds, this means in sheltered, east facing hollows.
Ciste Mhearad - 17.01.2015 (Alex Barbour) by
iainjamescameron, on Flickr
I took a walk up Meall nan Tarmachan today in very difficult conditions (deep powder), though the weather was stunning. An example of the very large drifts can be seen below, and a full suite of pictures is
here.
Untitled by
iainjamescameron, on Flickr